Setting up a way forward for real-time data in Nepal

Over the past few years, Nepal has seen the growth in data demand and use because of the increased number of CSOs working actively promote the importance of open data. Today, the quickness with which information is delivered is crucial to citizens, government and enterprises.

We at Open Knowledge Nepal believes that the data should provide insights into day to day operations, lives and help citizens make decisions about those operations, and then act accordingly. The value of real-time (which is presented as it is acquired and difficult to handle) and fresh (which is consistently accessible, up-to-date and immediately usable) data is even higher, like gold value, stock market, currency exchange rate, weather, temperature, water flow, rainfall etc. It provides the flexibility to analyze it in real-time and trace the source to generate valuable insights.

So, to make the access and use of real-time data easier, we recently launched the beta version of the real-time data dashboard at Open Data Nepal portal. The main objective of the dashboard is to open up and provide scattered data from a central hub. The intended project is just an initiative for pushing and archiving the real-time data generated by various sources of Nepal into Open Data Portal. The current version of the real-time data dashboard consists of the fresh and real-time data archive of three major government sources (www.pollution.gov.np | www.hydrology.gov.np | www.kalimatimarket.gov.np). The dashboard aims to encourage respective government bodies to adopt a new and innovative way of data dissemination.

Group photo from the launch event

The dashboard included different features and user can go through a video tour to learn how to navigate the dashboard. The enthusiastic developers who are interested in learning how dashboard function can go through the developer blog, where they can find how we developed real-time data scraper to retrieve data from a government website and publish it on our dashboard.

Open Knowledge Nepal also organized an Open Data Hackathon on 26th July 2019, where we host around 35 data geeks and environment experts to explore the real-time air pollution and hydrology data which are available at the dashboard to find key insights. All the work done by the team at Open Data Hackathon has been open-sourced and can be accessed from the OKN GitHub repository.

Group photo from the Open Data Hackathon

To understand the real-time data ecosystem within government and its demand, we also hosted the representative of DFID Nepal, DFID UK and The Asia Foundation for the the Kalimati Fruits and Vegetables Market Development Board field visit. The field visit aimed to understand the data ecosystem of the market. The real-time dashboard also consist the price data of daily fruits and vegetables from the Kalimati Market Board.

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About Nikesh Balami

Nikesh is a civic entrepreneur, open data advocate and tech researcher. He is the co-founder and CEO of Open Knowledge Nepal – a non-profit civic tech organization comprised of openness aficionados. He is a strong supporter of open source software and believes in the vision of Open Knowledge to empower citizens regarding technology usage and open data. He loves coffee chat, tweeting, hackathons, blogging, traveling and open data. He holds a Diploma in Computer Engineering and is currently pursuing his bachelor degree from Purbanchal University. Nikesh is a Shuttleworth Flash Grantee 2016 and U.S. Embassy Youth Council member 2017/18.